Since the ever-evolving "conversation" got so heated during ArtPrize's third year, my top prediction for 2012 is that the elites-versus-masses conflict is solved once and for all -- via restraining order, like in the "Simpsons" episode where the judge orders science and religion to remain 500 feet apart at all times.

But that's just one of many ArtPrize 2012 prognostications/educated guesses I uncovered during my most recent glimpse into the future.

I did the same thing last year. As we know, starting in 2012, the previous year's top 10 are prohibited from returning. But since I'm not an ArtPrize artist, there's nothing stopping me from rehashing a previously successful idea and presenting it in diminished form. So here, then, are the rest of my crystal-ball predictions for ArtPrize 4.0:

• Your first conceptual argument about ArtPrize becomes tiresome in about 30 seconds.

• "Shangled" enters the Urban Dictionary as "To have benefited disproportionately from location."

• ArtPrize dissenters are encouraged to share their objections in one of the competition's designated "free speech zones."

• Sunti Pichetchaiyakul gets halfway through a new piece, "The Entire City of Grand Rapids Watches President Gerald Ford Visiting ArtPrize, This Time With Betty," before remembering the rule against top-10 re-entry.

• Following an off year, the "things made of smaller things" medium resurges to dominate the top 10.

• In an interesting twist, organizers announce artists will be docked one up vote for every hour of labor they publicly claim went into their entries.

• The ArtPrize-affiliated Bro-Specto music festival confirms 311, Pop Evil and Sublime tribute band Badfish as its headliners.

• Any person who votes down on a patriotic entry gets put on "the list."

• The winning entry is housed at the Pyramid Scheme bar, because wouldn't that be hilarious? Get it, pyramid scheme? Never mind.

• An artist who objects to the popular-voting system argues that since we don't let the public choose their spinal surgeons and architects and pilots, we shouldn't let them decide the quality of art, and everyone is, like, totally persuaded.

• People show up at the window behind WOOD-TV's live Grand Rapids Art Museum broadcasts carrying hand-made signs loaded with obscenities.

• A B.O.B.-sponsored promotional tie-in called ChotchPrize will honor the most effective pick-up line uttered during the three weeks of ArtPrize.

• Rick DeVos makes the startling admission that the goal of ArtPrize isn't to enhance public understanding of our relationship to art, or to honor the best work, or even to boost downtown business, but, rather, to fill the city with "crazy crap" and..., wait, what? You're kidding, he actually said that? This year? Wow, I mean, I was just joking around, but, um, yikes. OK, let's move on.

• ArtPrize With a Depressed Thirty-Six-Year-Old, a variation on the blog ArtPrize With a One Year Old, fails to deepen the conversation in any meaningful way.

• A careless ArtPrize intern accidentally puts something on the Twitter that was supposed to go on the Tumblr and is never heard from again.